A better democracy, one student at a time

December 13, 2006

Debating immigration policy

So, I'm probably a little late on the uptake here, but I ran across this site last week. It's a great selection of materials put together by some AVID coordinators out here in California - very useful for anyone thinking about discussing immigration policy and reform options in the classroom. Proving, once again, why AVID is my hero (brilliant organization, exceptional results, I could go on and on...).

The standout here is the booklet done by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. It's good. Very good. The readings are well done and easy to follow for many students (could be better scaled to middle level students and ELL students, however). I'd like to see more explicit vocabulary instruction, but for many students this will serve as a good primer.

I've worked with a number of teachers this year who have wanted to teach immigration policy in their classroom and use it as an issue for debate and discussion. It's such a great issue, as it intersects with a number of topics in the social science curriculum as well as the language arts curriculum. It's nice to see the good people at the CRF doing work to assist teachers in this area.

The second day, Gerry picked me up with his car and a trailer with 5 other boats on it. This was the class day. We went into the beautiful Powers Lake where the water are clear and the “relatively” warm for Gerry to give his Level 2 class. We had there Dave, Susan and Kate which are taking this class for the second time and Steve and Pat that took a paddling class for the first time.